SEPTEMBER 2011

Vendor Round Table
Desktop Virtualization
Top Desktop Virtualization Vendors Answer IT’s Questions
Why you should read this document:
This guide is designed to help you evaluate desktop virtualization
solutions based on a series of questions posed to today’s top
vendors, including:
• Description of current offering, including delivery model and
solution architecture.
• Which usage scenarios the solution is best suited for,
including mobile.
• How the solution handles compute load, graphics, web server
load, and more.
• How the solution balances user expectations with the need
for security.
Vendor Round Table
Desktop Virtualization
Desktop Virtualization Vendors Answer IT’s Questions
Contents
3 Introduction
4
Intel Guidance on Vendor Selection
5
Participating Vendors
6
Vendor Responses to IT Questions
36 Intel Resources for Learning More
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Vendor Round Table
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Desktop Virtualization
Introduction This guide is designed to help you evaluate desktop virtualization software vendors by
letting you compare their answers to common IT questions.
IT departments are increasingly turning to desktop virtualization to
help them achieve an important equilibrium: balancing their need
to exert more control over the client platform, so they can simplify
management and rein in costs, with their users’ desire for more
flexibilityandgreaterchoiceinendpointsandapplications.But many IT professionals are daunted by the complexity of the desktop
virtualization ISV landscape. The possibilities are many, and so are
the software vendors. We created this guide to help you evaluate
different desktop virtualization solutions by enabling you to
compare vendor answers across a standard set of questions.
BasedonIntel’sexperienceimplementingdesktopvirtualization in our own organization, we compiled a list of questions IT
professionals typically ask as they start researching vendor
solutions. We then posed these questions to six desktop
virtualization vendors: three long-time players in the desktop
virtualization space (Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware) and three newer
companies (Scense, Virtual Computer, and Wanova). This document
compiles their responses.
Desktop Virtualization
Resources from Intel
The Desktop Virtualization Vendor Round Table is
part of a series of documents produced by Intel to
help IT professionals plan and implement desktop
virtualization in their own organizations. This series
includes the following:
• Desktop Virtualization Planning Guide. Four steps
to planning a desktop virtualization implementation,
based on the experience of Intel’s IT department.
• Desktop Virtualization Earns Its Stripes:
Insights from Intel’s IT Benchmarking Survey on
Desktop Virtualization. Survey of IT professionals
that discusses the business and technology drivers
behind their desktop virtualization plans, how they
plan to measure return on investment (ROI), and
which delivery models and software vendors they
are considering.
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Desktop Virtualization
Intel Guidance on Vendor Selection
Desktop virtualization is a collection of techniques—including
streaming, remoting, virtualizing, and layering. Desktop virtualization
software solutions apply some or all of these techniques to full
desktop images or to applications. The resulting entities are
administered and managed by IT through centralized management
consoles.Whiledesktopvirtualizationoffersmanybenefits,itisnot aone-size-fits-allproposition.Therearemultipledeliverymodels, and it’s very likely that the best solution for your company will be a
combination of two or more of these models.
When choosing the right desktop virtualization
Read the full SEPTEMBER 2011.